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Wednesday, 2 April 2014

The Ostrogothic Military

[Here [updated 12/08/14] is a chapter which I have kindly (and somewhat surprisingly) been asked to write for a forthcoming Brill Companion to Ostrogothic Italy, on the army of that interesting realm. It attempts to steer a middle (and I hope more interesting and subtle) course in a number of polarised debates: on 'the Goths: army or people', 'Hospitalitas' and the nature of Gothic ethnicity. As ever, comments and corrections are welcome. Thanks, to those who helped me track down the hardly-probative evidence for Theodoric's disbanding of the Roman Guard regiments.]

A gratuitous plug, but it does (probably)
Have Theodoric on the front.

Introduction

The Ostrogothic Kingdom was
created and destroyed by conquest and, throughout the realm’s short life, the
army remained a central feature of its politics and society. A discussion of military affairs in Gothic
Italy therefore requires that attention be devoted to such seemingly unmilitary
issues as the Gothic settlement and its nature and the kingdom’s ethnic
politics, which have been the focus of much, sometimes fierce, debate in recent
decades. This chapter will be organised
according to three main chronological phases: first, the period of the
conquest; second, Theodoric’s reign as king of Italy; and finally the Gothic
wars. This will permit the examination
of change through time as well as allowing the analysis to confront issues
specific to each sub-period. Although
the Ostrogothic Italian kingdom spanned only three generations, it is important
to remember that Theodoric’s was a long reign by any standards. The dynamics at work meant that the troops
who accompanied him across the Isonzo in 489 were very different from those who
undertook the military operations of his last years and entirely unlike those
of the Gothic Wars.

A: The Army of the Conquest

Theodoric’s Goths: Army or People?

The forces that Theodoric led
across the Alps in 489 had developed out of more than one Gothic group. Principally they originated in Theodoric’s
own armed following and in that of his namesake, Theodoric Strabo (“the
Squinter”).[1] Neither group can be considered as “the
Gothic people”, regardless of how later sources, from within the Italian
kingdom and outside, may have wanted to create that image. The very fact that two such Gothic groups
existed gives the lie to such a supposition.
Nor should we suppose that these were the only two such groups; they
were simply the most numerous and, therefore, the most politically and
militarily significant.

Like the others, these bands
originated in the instability that followed the fragmentation of Attila’s
short-lived trans-Danubian “empire” in the 450s. In Attila’s polyglot empire, beneath a
unifying Hunnic political identity, his subjects doubtless had several levels
of ethnicity. In a justly famous story,
the East Roman ambassador Priscus met a Greek in Attila’s camp,[2]
but this “Greek” clearly also fully regarded himself as a Hun. It has long been pointed out that most of the
Huns known to us bear Gothic names, not least Attila and his brother Bleda. Such material culture as can reasonably be
associated with the Hunnic Empire emerges from a mixture of local Roman and Barbarian
traditions. After Attila’s death, civil
strife broke out between his sons and other former commanders and troops. Often depicted as a rising of “subject
peoples”, this conflict seems more reasonably described as a succession crisis
in which those opposed to the Attilan dynasty adopted non-Hunnic identities,
bringing back to the surface those lower-level ethnicities, like Priscus’
interlocutor’s Greek identity, which had always been there. Following the defeat of Attila’s sons at the
Nedao, a somewhat bewildering array of “peoples” came fleetingly into view in
the wreckage of the Hunnic “empire”.[3] For some, even a solid historical existence
as peoples can be questioned. We know of
only three named Skiri: Odovacar, his father and his brother.[4] It is difficult to decide whether Skirian
identity ought to be considered “ethnic” or familial. Nonetheless, a successful family might
attract enough followers for its kin-group identity to spread, be adopted and
become an identity that operated in uncontrovertibly “ethnic” fashion. After all, historians are accustomed to describing
post-imperial Gaul, its people and culture between the late fifth and eighth
centuries using a familial identity originating precisely in Odovacar’s
generation: Merovingian. The families of
the two Theodorics stressed their Gothic identity, just as other people with
Gothic names had adopted, or continued to proclaim, a Hunnic ethnicity. Others still made political claims based around
Gepidic, or Herulian, or Rugian, identity.
Whether any of these factions should be considered a revival or
reappearance of a tribe with a long pedigree seems questionable.

One recent debate has been
whether the Goths formed a “people on the move”, as in traditional
Völkerwanderung interpretations, or, as in more recent works, a simple military
force: an army. This controversy is incapable
of easy resolution.[5] Extreme interpretations, at either pole, are
unsatisfying, not least because the terms “army” and “people” are rather
trickier to define than might be assumed.
Consequently, between the “polar” readings conclusions are more
difficult to pigeon-hole as either “army” or “people”. Nevertheless the issue is of considerable
relevance to this chapter.

Our sources mention that the
Gothic factions (like, presumably, the others) had women and children in tow.[6] This has been taken as proving that they
should be considered a “people” on the move.[7] This does not necessarily follow. Roman armies took non-combatant women and
children with them too, and so did most armies until well into the twentieth
century.[8] While sounding a note of caution, however, this
does not authorise us completely to disallow the interpretation of the Goths as
“people on the move”. Pursuing the “factional”
interpretation permits an intermediate course to be steered. We might envisage a social group including
women and children, but with young male warriors in the following of more
established leaders nevertheless forming the most important element. The issue of age has not fully been taken
into account in discussions of the Gothic settlement of Italy (or, indeed, in that
of other “barbarian” settlements).[9]

After a long period of almost
constant campaigning, in and out of official East Roman service, three
consequences can readily be imagined.
One is the knitting of warrior bands into established, quasi-permanent
bodies of men. Living together
year-round, practising weapon-use and regularly fighting alongside one another,
these would acquire most of the significant attributes of regular military
units and the whole organisation those of a permanent army. Indeed that seems generally to have been how
the Ostrogoths functioned in Balkan politics in the 470s and 480s. The second consequence of the Goths’ career
in this period, however, will have been the steady acquisition of wives,
children and, doubtless, other camp followers.
Paradoxically, then, as the Goths took on more of the form and functions
of an army, they will have become more varied in social composition. The third consequence, all too-often
forgotten, is that throughout this time young warriors got older; mature
warriors became old and possibly infirm.
Without an established place in Eastern Roman social, military and
political structures, they could not settle down. They had little option but to continue to
move and – as long as they could – fight with the rest. This too made the Goths, even if originating,
organised and functioning as an “army”, much more like a “people” than most
military forces. Therefore, to see the
force that headed for Italy in 489 as, by then, looking rather more like a “people”
than a normal army, one need not envisage Theodoric’s Goths as originating as a
tribe or people that upped sticks and moved en masse. Put another way, once the dynamics of the
situation are thought through, even a narrowly military reading of the Goths’
origins and structure (like this one) must ultimately see the force that
arrived in Italy as something more socially variegated. That must impact significantly upon how we
understand Gothic settlement.

Italian Background

The Italian military background is
also important.[10] The western Empire’s fifth-century decay produced
crucial changes in Italian politics, as elsewhere. The loss of direct imperial control over
Africa in the 420s and 430s was critical.
The seaborne threat from Carthage meant that a significant force had to
be stationed throughout the Italian peninsula, rather than just in the north, which
had hitherto not been necessary. A key
element of fifth-century politics was the increasing separation and rivalry
between Italian and Gallic aristocracies.
However, whereas the fourth-century Italian aristocracy had had little
option but to accept the de facto
shift of the imperial core to the Rhine frontier, it now had an armed force to
help it ensure it commanded the centre of politics and patronage. Control of the Italian army became crucial in
peninsular politics, as Ricimer’s long period of dominance makes very
clear. Although unable to establish
itself over the factions based upon the Gothic and Burgundian armies in Gaul,
the Dalmatian army, or the Vandal forces in Africa, it nevertheless retained
control over Italy, expelling the Gallic/Gothic faction in 457 and the
(legitimate) Dalmatian claimant in 475 as well as fending off occasional
attacks from African Vandals and trans-Alpine Alamanni.

Recruitment remained problematic,
however. The lack of effective control
over fiscal resources beyond Provence and the Narbonnaise in Gaul or
Tarraconensis in Spain greatly reduced any Italian emperor’s income. Simultaneously, the peninsula became a political
hot-house as the senatorial nobility, likewise cut off from properties and
revenues abroad, competed with lower-order aristocrats for honours, titles and
patronage, especially at a local level where wealth differences were now much
reduced. This made the government’s
ability to levy troops as well as taxes more problematic. It was preferable to use taxes to pay for the
recruitment of soldiers from outside Italy, specifically from barbaricum and especially trans-Danubian
barbaricum. These, at least initially, lacked local ties
and were more easily employed as a coercive force. Not surprisingly, therefore, the governmental
resources used to pay the army were referred to as the fiscus barbaricus.[11]

Nonetheless, crucial dynamics operated
here as well as within the Ostrogothic army.
Roman troops’ remuneration had always involved land and late Roman
forces, as noted above, lived, and sometimes moved, accompanied by wives and
children. Recruits – like Goths – get older,
marry and settle down. Military service
was hereditary,[12]
so any children expected, in time, to follow their fathers into the army,
which, over time, became as integrated into peninsular society and politics as
any other group. The soldiery that
serially deposed Julius Nepos and Romulus “Augustulus” doubtless contained significant
numbers of men born and raised in Italy, even if serving in units with
barbarian titles: second-generation “Italo-barbarians”.

This discussion casts the
confrontation between Odoacer’s and Theodoric’s armies between 489 and 492
somewhat differently from the clash of barbarian armies sometimes
imagined. Both sides originated in a
very specific, fifth-century imperial context.
The similarities between them doubtless explain the drawn-out,
long-indecisive nature of the struggle and the common changing of sides.[13] Nonetheless, Theoderic’s troops’ military
experience and long practice in operating as units, was probably crucial to
their eventual victory.[14] The similarities between the opposing sides
may also help us understand the Gothic settlement in Italy.

Hospitalitas

The Gothic settlement has
probably been the most controversial issue concerning Theodoric’s army and
Italian society and politics. It has
been dubbed, misleadingly in some ways, “the Hospitalitas debate.”[15] The name hospitalitas
(loosely, hospitality) came from a late Roman billeting law, describing the
division of billets into thirds, the householder taking two and the soldier the
other.[16] In the Wars,
Procopius claimed that the barbarians appropriated of a third of the land of Italy,
and Cassiodorus’ Variae allude to
Gothic “thirds” or “shares”. That Italy
was divided according to late Roman billeting law, with one third going to the
Goths, was long the more or less unchallenged understanding of the mechanics of
barbarian settlement in Italy. It fit
then dominant paradigms, seeing the fifth century’s principal feature as
violent barbarian conquest and viewing the barbarians as tribes searching for
land.

This consensus was challenged by
Walter Goffart’s important book Barbarians
and Romans, which changed the game in several ways.[17] Goffart used the Italian evidence, rather
than the Burgundian as had hitherto been more usual, to shape his general
theory about how barbarians were settled.
The Italian data were more contemporary, if in some ways less detailed
than the relevant clauses of the Burgundian
Code. Aquitanian Gothic and
Burgundian settlements were separated from the documents that described them by
a long time and more than one phase of settlement. Ennodius’ and Cassiodorus’ writings provided
a direct view of how barbarian troops were settled in a Roman province. Goffart’s second, more famous, move was to place
the settlement within the context of Roman taxation. Broadly, he argued that the Gothic settlers
in Italy were granted not “thirds” of land but “thirds” of tax-revenue.

Goffart showed that the Roman law
of hospitalitas had nothing to do
with salary, provisioning or settlement, but simply the temporary provision of shelter.
He dismissed Procopius’ testimony as parti pris, motivated by a desire to
justify Justinian’s reconquest. The Wars clearly manifest Justinian’s
ideological campaign, claiming that the West had been lost to “barbarian
invasion” and thus required reconquering.
Procopius may have distorted evidence concerned with “thirds” to paint
Theodoric in a bad light. The reference
to a third of the land may be no more than hyperbole, and have nothing at all to
do with the tertia referred to elsewhere. With Procopius set aside, Goffart turned to
directly contemporary Italian evidence.
First, there was rhetorical evidence in Ennodius’ and Cassiodorus’ writings
declaring that the Goths had been settled without the Roman landowners feeling
any loss.[18] It was difficult, said Goffart, to envisage
such statements being made if the senators had indeed just been stripped of a
third of their estates.

Goffart then turned to more
technical aspects of Cassiodorus’ Variae,
especially to the terms illatio tertiarum
and millennarius.[19] The illatio
tertiarum had previously been read as a tax paid by landowners who had not
had had their estates partitioned in order to provide land for a Goth, levied
as a third of the revenue of all land. Alongside
actual expropriation, this would have made Ennodius’ and Cassiodorus’
statements (just referred to) crass in the extreme; it would have represented a
serious – if not crippling – burden on the Italian aristocracy. The latter clearly retained its fifth-century
prosperity under the Ostrogoths, which is hard to envisage if their revenues
had been reduced by this level. Goffart suggested
that the illatio was, rather, a third
of the usual tax revenues, set aside for the payment of the Goths. The “third” (tertia) referred not to a share of lands or an estate but to a
fraction of fiscal income, diverted towards the Goths as their salary.[20]

A millenarius[21] had
earlier been assumed command a thousand men, a chiliarch. The term can
indeed mean this but Goffart pointed out that a millena was a Roman notional tax assessment unit, still used in
Ostrogothic Italy.[22] In imperial administrative practice, units of
this sort, in specific numbers and perhaps drawn from particular fiscal assets,
were set aside for designated purposes.
For Goffart, a millenarius was
a Gothic soldier paid with a millena
of tax-revenue, collected from specified taxpayers.[23] Gothic troops were also given periodic
donatives and received other rewards from the king.[24] Some conflicts between Gothic soldiers and
Italian taxpayers arose where the former attempted to convert a legitimate
right to receive a salary in tax into the illegitimate ownership of the land on
which that tax was levied.[25]

Goffart’s reading has
considerable advantages, not least simplicity.
No longer did one need to envisage a horde of agrimensores touring the Italian peninsula, assessing estates and
their relative value before assigning measured portions to specific Goths. The state gained an independent coercive
force – a standing army – and lost nothing; revenue collection was
simplified. Nonetheless, most historians
have remained unconvinced. Some
critiques have been scholarly and struck important notes of caution; others
less so. The most important issue is
that, as formulated in 1980, Goffart’s thesis required readers to understand terra as having a specialist meaning as “fiscal
revenue from the land”. Many authors argued
that this seemed rather forced. In 2006,
however, Goffart penned a more persuasive discussion drawing attention to the
fact that even straightforward-looking references to land in modern legal documents
mean more than simple designated areas of the earth’s surface. “Land” comes with a web of diverse types of
relations and obligations attached. This
ruled out any argument that simply proclaimed terra to be “unambiguous”, meaning “land” as though “land” were
itself unambiguous. In any case,
Goffart’s argument had never simply relied upon tendentiously translating words
like terra in new, technical ways. It had accounted for many other
relationships, largely ignored by anti-Goffartian works that proclaimed that “land
is land”.

The main problem for Goffart’s
critics (and there are many) is that the root of the traditional view was the
common appearance of tripartite division in the Roman law of hospitalitas and in some texts that
discuss barbarian settlement. Whatever
else one might have to say about Goffart’s studies, one thing is clear. It is, to my knowledge, the one area where no
historian has attempted to contradict him: Goffart decisively showed that the Theodosian Code’s title dealing with hospitalitas had no bearing on the
issues confronted in the texts describing fifth- and sixth-century barbarian tertia and the rest. Therefore, even if one finds Goffart’s
argument entirely unconvincing, it is not viable blithely to return to what he
has called “expropriationist” theses of the old style, based ultimately on that
hospitalitas law. Sadly, however, that seems to have been the
option most commonly adopted. Unwilling
to accept Goffart’s “fiscalist” revision, they have continued into a sort of
interpretive hyperspace, where no reading actually has any grounding but where
we can at least shut our eyes, block our ears and pretend to know where we
are. The imagined fixed points from
which the anti-Goffartian view takes its bearings are, historiographically-speaking,
spectres: reflections of something no longer there.

None of this means Goffart’s
interpretation is unproblematic; his most recent contribution to the debate certainly
does not “definitively” settle the issue.[26] Some preliminary ground-clearing is
necessary. We must be absolutely
rigorous in keeping to the precise issue under debate and to the particular data
relevant to that issue. Evidence, for
example, that the Goths owned land cannot be employed against Goffart’s
view. His book concerned the salary of barbarian settlers within the
Empire and thus their relations with the state.
It discussed accommodation in that precise sense, not where or whether the
barbarians owned land; the barbarians had to live somewhere. We must also
avoid the temptation to assume that a single mode of settlement applied in all cases. Interpretation must relate to the particular
documents under discussion and the specific social and political relationships
described, neither element of which need have universal implications.

One cannot fill in the blanks
from other barbarian settlements or, conversely, export Italian Gothic details
to understand other arrangements. The
Goths had conquered and assumed direct government of the territory – Italy –
which had to provide for its payment.
The power-relations involved were therefore entirely different from
those pertaining in Aquitaine in 418-9 or in Sapaudia in 442. In both of
the latter cases the barbarians were moved and installed by a Roman government
which dominated them militarily.
Obviously, the victorious Goths in Italy are likely to have employed
extant administrative arrangements such as may have been used in earlier
settlements but we cannot assume that all details must therefore have been the
same. The contrary seems more likely.

A further piece of
ground-clearing arises. We need not
assume, as do Goffart and his critics, that all the land of Italy was
encompassed in the discussion of “thirds”.
The only text to talk in such terms is Procopius’ Wars. If, as Goffart does (correctly,
in my view), one rejects that testimony as, or as stemming from, Justinianic
propaganda, one must logically reject it all.
One cannot pick and choose details from it. The most one might say from it, as noted
earlier, is that the fraction of a third might have come from the legal arrangements
employed. The documents discussing
precise cases have no necessary implication of a universal, peninsula-wide
arrangement. All they need imply is that
those relationships applied to sufficient lands or resources as were necessary
for the Gothic army’s payment. Indeed,
all we need assume is that those relationships applied to sufficient lands or
resources as were required to pay those Goths who were paid in that way.
There is no necessary implication that all Goths were remunerated entirely
in the fashion discussed in the handful of relevant documents in the Variae.
Critics of the Goffart hypothesis have made the point before that it is
unlikely that all Goths received the same payment, but they have usually done so
on the mistaken assumption that a standard salary,
rather than a standard means of paying
a salary, was implicit in Goffart’s argument

Nonetheless, Goffart’s reading of
the nature of illatio, tertia, sortes and millenarii seems preferable to its alternatives. Furthermore, late imperial Roman precedents existed
for the general system suggested; such a system had apparently been used for
the payment of elite field armies, such as the Goths, in a general sense, were.[27] A Gothic warrior would be paid by a draft on
taxation.[28] He would collect this from designated tax
payers and, as Gothic status seems to have been more or less equivalent to
service in the field army, this relationship would be inherited by his sons alongside
the obligation to military service. Most,
if not all, of the key elements of this situation derived more or less directly
from the late imperial military. It is
crucial, as Goffart correctly noted, to underline that the relationship between
Goth and Roman was that of government official to taxpayer. Beyond the legitimate payment of designated
tax, it implied no other relative status.
A Goth may have been of a higher or lower standing than the Roman or
Romans ear-marked to pay him his salary.

The Goffart thesis’ limitation is
its insistence that this single system entirely sufficed in all cases. That requires complex and sometimes less
convincing argumentation to explain away texts that do not fit. It is simpler to propose that, while Goffart’s
proposed system provided the army’s essential salary, it was not necessarily
the only means used. It has been argued
before that different Gothic status groups may have wanted payment in different
forms, rather than just in varying amounts.[29] The resources of the sacrae largitiones and res
privata, included landed estates and palaces as well as other sources of
revenue, surely passed directly from Odovacar to Theodoric. At least one
Gothic family (the Amals) received land upon which to live... It is hardly implausible that Theodoric, like
the emperors, employed these resources to reward some of his followers. Grants of imperial fiscal land on long-term,
emphyteutic leases are reasonably well attested as a form of imperial
patronage.[30] Theodoric had other – entirely traditional –
resources that would fall within the sacrae
largitiones and res privata. Confiscating defeated enemies’ property was normal
in the aftermath of civil war.[31] It is reasonable to see Odovacar’s senior
supporters being expropriated, their land taken by the fisc and used to reward
Theodoric’s followers, or some of them.[32] Contemporary sources talk of significant
massacres of Odovacar’s men.[33] These had probably been paid according to a
system like that proposed by Goffart but they lived somewhere and that property
fell to the Gothic leader to retain or redistribute. We can easily envisage Theodoric’s senior or
favoured followers being remunerated with land-grants. However, this has no bearing on the documents
discussed by Goffart or the precise situations they describe; it has no relationship
to the normal Gothic military salary.

A considerable swathe of agri deserti (with no registered
tax-payer) also existed.[34] The late Roman state had continued to reward
retiring veterans with land.[35] Employing the agri deserti, yielding no tax revenue, for this cost the government
nothing. Indeed, enmeshing these lands in
a system of military obligations extended the fisc’s resources. Note, though, that this (like the
confiscations) is irrelevant to discussions of sortes or tertia, which
relate to tax revenue. Some dynamics
within the Gothic army come into play here.
Not all Theodoric’s men were warriors in the prime of life. Some had campaigned with him for twenty years
and doubtless expected to settle down.
Others may have fought on into old age, or accompanied the army as
infirm ex-warriors, simply for the protection provided. Such people would not normally draw an annual
salary, plus periodic donatives, in return for military service.[36] Land was a more appropriate reward for them. Nonetheless, because Gothic soldiers’ status
and obligations were heritable, lands so used were automatically entwined in
issues of military service, especially when inherited by the next
generation.

Let us imagine an elderly Goth,
an old companion of Theodoric and perhaps Thiudimir his father, being rewarded
for long service with an Italian ager
desertus. No longer militarily
active, he has a son in the army, who collects his salary from designated
taxpayers according to the Goffart system; he is a millenarius. When the old
Goth dies, the son inherits his land.[37] But, because he inherited his Gothic status
and military obligations from his father, that land is now subject to military
service. This mature Goth now supports
himself from two sources, both ultimately granted by the government: the ager (no longer desertus) and the salary from the millena/e. Imagine another
Goth, a young man who joined Theodoric’s army during its campaigns, with no
elderly relatives to support. After the
conquest of Italy, he is paid from designated millena. He marries an
Italian woman and has children. He may
or may not buy land during this time, but when he retires he is rewarded, in
Roman fashion, with a landed allotment. The
same features come into play as with the first Goth. His sons inherit his identity and military
obligation. When they inherit the ager that land, like that of the older
Goth discussed earlier, becomes part of a fiscal resource of a new type – land
held tax-free, effectively in return for military service – and they have two
sources of sustenance.

This hypothetical reconstruction seems
plausible. Note, first, that there has
been no expropriation of any Roman landlord.[38] Second, the Goffart interpretation of the
standard means of furnishing a soldier’s salary remains entirely intact. None of the reconstruction forces any
revision at all of Goffart’s reading of the precise texts dealing with the illatio, tertiae, or millena/millenarii.

Crucially, however, the system
described contained the seeds of potential change through time. Indeed, recognition of change and the passage
of time are crucial to a full understanding of the issue. Within a generation or so we have a situation
where Gothic soldiers draw a salary not just from drafts on taxation, where
land with attached military obligations has also come into the equation. This situation is close to that visible in
Merovingian Gaul slightly later in the sixth century.[39] Indeed the growing connection between Gothic
troops and specific lands and communities is precisely the dynamic suggested
earlier, whereby earlier barbarian recruits (such as Odovacar’s followers) had
gradually become fixed in the Italian landscape. The power relations also remain; the Gothic
government retains a standing, salaried army while simplifying aspects of
revenue collection and distribution. The
advantage of this reconstruction is that it is dynamic. Over time, with the cycles of life, salaried
Gothic soldiers evolved into people settled in communities with their families,
with local social ties beyond those of tax-payer and tax-collector. They nevertheless remained an essentially
military element of society. This allows
us to retain the Goffart interpretation and understand references to Gothic landed
properties without having to explain them away or, alternatively, use them as a
basis for rejecting Goffart’s thesis about salaries.

Goffart himself drew attention to
another dynamic: the temptation to transfer a right to collect a salary from a
designated fiscal asset into the latter’s outright ownership. This would completely change the
relationships involved, making the tax-payer – whose status vis-à-vis the
Goth’s was otherwise immaterial – into the Goth’s tenant. Some documents seem to represent attempts to
prevent, or to investigate allegations of, such abuses.[40] During weak, especially minority, government
such abuses can easily be imagined, becoming more widespread and more successful. I have argued that this dynamic lies behind
changes in Merovingian Frankish aristocratic landholding and power during a
period of stress largely brought on by royal minorities around 600. If we accept Procopius’ account, this may
even have lain behind the Italian army’s demands that led to Orestes’ downfall,
though, as mentioned earlier, rejection of the whole story is probably the most
consistent approach. Yet a further
dynamic within the model is the purchase or acquisition by other means of landed
properties; a Goth would be own these in the usual way. Unlike any lands granted as remuneration for
service and subsequently inherited, these would not be free from the capitatio or other relevant taxes and
obligations. Goths might however want to
extend tax-exemption to all their
lands.[41]
This, as again I have suggested for mid-
and later sixth-century Gaul, would be a source of conflict.[42] Overall, we should not see the system used to
settle the Gothic army after 492 as taking a single form or imagine that the
initial state of affairs remained unchangeably in place throughout the
kingdom’s existence.

B: The Army of the Ostrogothic Kingdom

The army in the governance of the kingdom

Theodoric’s greatest problem
after his victory over Odovacar was how to unify and govern Italy. The power of Roman aristocrats, especially
those below the level of the old senatorial nobility, whose authority was
probably more intensive within specific localities, as well as the potential
threat posed by leading Gothic families, aggravated the difficulties to
communication and the exercise of power posed by Italy’s difficult physical
geography.[43] Theodoric’s relations with the army illustrate
how he dealt with this problem. To
maintain his authority, the king had to scatter his forces throughout the
peninsula in garrisons. Yet, this
potentially exacerbated the problem just alluded to. A local commander (perhaps with a claim to
nobility or even royalty just as good as Theodoric’s) might use his troops,
perhaps in alliance with the region’s aristocrats, to challenge royal
authority.

One solution might be to ensure
that Goths did not carry out their military service in the regions where their millenae were located, though whether
such a solution was practical in Italy is doubtful.[44] Theodoric seems instead to have imaginatively
employed patronage and propaganda.[45] The army was seemingly assembled regularly in
the principal, northern royal centres: Pavia, Milan and Ravenna. At these gatherings, Theodoric paid donatives
(a supplementary salary in cash), rewarded those who had done well and punished
those who had not.[46] This enabled a continuous distribution and
redistribution of royal patronage, not only in the circulation of offices but
also in the geographical redeployment of his men, ensuring that no family or
faction could build up an established local power-base. Furthermore, it made Gothic noble or royal families
compete for royal favour with their lower-born companions.

When assembled for these purposes,
the army was subject to manifestations of royal ideology aurally, in speeches,
panegyrics and so on, and visually, in the pictorial and epigraphic decoration
of the buildings used.[47] The Senegallia Medallion demonstrates that
some of the largesse distributed carried Theodorician propaganda.[48] As manifested in Cassiodorus’ writings, these
ideological productions stressed the army’s role as a pillar of civilitas and consequently the
requirement for harmonious relations between Gothic troops and Roman civilians.[49] This output, of course, also stressed
Theodoric’s claim (at least by the latter half of the reign) to represent an
ancient, uniquely royal dynastic claim to power.[50] An association with the king, or royal
authorisation, trumped any other claim to legitimate local authority but
competition for this entailed subscription to Theodoric’s propaganda and
ideology.[51] This process undermined pre-existing Gothic social
distinctions and ensured that Theodoric’s royal writ penetrated the
geographically disparate local communities of his realm. Simultaneously, it assured the army’s continuing
function, in spite of increasingly complex and deeper-seated social ties, as a state-controlled
coercive force.

None of this meant that relations
between the army and local society were uniformly harmonious, any more than the
imperial Roman army’s relations with civilians had been. The Variae
contain numerous instances of conflicts and complaints arising from the army’s
behaviour.[52] Cassiodorus repeatedly wrote that Gothic
troops should not molest, harass or steal from the provincials in areas where
they are stationed or through which they are marching.[53] One document compensates the provincials of
the Cottian Alps for depredations committed by the army as it passed through
the region en route to Gaul in 508. Like
Roman troops, Goths on campaign were supplied with food and other necessities (annonae) by the fisc. For the kingdom’s mountainous northern
frontier garrisons this was especially important. Hungry troops could easily start to take what
they wanted from their civilian neighbours.
Cassiodorus had to write several documents ordering the rapid and
effective payment of annonae.[54]

Organisation

The Variae, a rich source for the army’s place within Theodoric’s
realm, give a clear impression of continuity from the late imperial situation
into Ostrogothic Italy as far as military affairs are concerned. Other than the fact that the army was made up
of Goths, the Variae provide no a priori evidence that much had changed
at all. Like late Roman troops, Gothic
soldiers were subject to their own jurisdiction.[55] It seems preferable to read the texts
discussing the jurisdiction over Goths and Romans in this way rather than
assuming that they refer to ancient Gothic tribal custom.

One means by which serving Gothic
soldiers were distinguished from civilians was apparently (as in other kingdoms)
by their long hair (as capillati), a
survival from the late Roman military.[56] Whether this meant a particular hairstyle or
simply referred to serving soldiers’ typically hirsute appearance (cp. the
French poilu) is unclear. The heavy chlamys
also continued to be a sign of military authority.[57] The army may have been a key institution in
maintaining outward signs of Gothicness.
A possible role in male socialisation will be discussed later but the
late Roman army had long espoused real or invented signs of barbarian identity. Its jargon incorporated Germanic terms and the
capillati’s long hair might have been
another sign of “barbarian chic”.[58] The army had also been a bastion of the Arian
creed in late imperial Italy.[59] Thus it was well suited to maintain the means
of signifying Gothic identity, like Arian belief and use (at least for
specialised technical terms) of the Gothic language.

The army’s organisation is not
clear. Theodoric is said to have
disbanded the Roman guards regiments as useless ceremonial units.[60]
However, although the comes domesticorum vacans was certainly
an honorific rank, the text cited to support the claim says the opposite.[61] The Variae
refer to domestici and scholares.[62] Royal bodyguards are referred to, albeit with
atticising Greek terms (hypaspistai, doryphoroi), in the accounts of the
Gothic Wars. The reference to the horse-
and foot-guards as domestici patres
equitum et peditum, which perplexed Hodgkin,[63]
may point at an important structuring element of the Gothic army, to which I
will return.

As well as its guard regiments,
the late Roman army had been organised into a field army (comitatenses) and frontier troops (limitanei or ripenses). Whether such a division persisted in Gothic
Italy is unknown. The text in the Variae cited to illustrate the existence
of limitanei does not support the
suggestion.[64] Troops were certainly stationed in frontier
forts, and Theodoric referred to their function of keeping out the barbarians
using traditional Roman vocabulary. The Variae, however, give no hint that they
were recruited differently from the field army.
The term miles is sometimes
used, and Goths are not referred to. Goths
are more often mentioned in the exercitus,
on campaign. This might support the
suggestion, logically enough given the “barbarian” composition of the late
Roman field armies. However, the formula
for the appointment of the duke of Raetia, a frontier province, makes clear
that milites are, simply enough,
soldiers in the exercitus, and
contrasts them with Romani and provinciales.[65] Nonetheless, Roman aristocrats – including
Cassiodorus’ great-grandfather – had raised and commanded local defence forces
during the fifth century[66]
and it is likely that city garrisons included Roman as well as Gothic
soldiers. A distinction may then have
existed.

The army’s ethnic component has
been one of the more debated elements of the Gothic military, especially since
Patrick Amory proposed that Gothic identity was simply a kind of professional
appellation, founded in late imperial ideology; to be a Goth was simply to be a
soldier.[67] Amory’s “rational choice” view of ethnicity
has been forcefully criticised by Peter Heather, who contends that the Goths
were a people, whose ethnic identity was grounded in a class of freemen.[68] Amory’s hypothesis of entirely fluid
ethnicity is too extreme, but Heather’s primordialism is too crude.

At the heart of the controversy
is both sides’ failure to appreciate two points.[69] First, ethnic change does not imply a
straight swap, exchanging one monolithic identity for another. Ethnicity is multi-layered; change involved
adding another level, not rejecting one’s entire ethnic identity and replacing
it wholesale with another. Different
levels of identity can be situationally reordered in importance. Over time an identity can become that
according to which one normally acts and is categorised, without one necessarily
ever abandoning other identities. This
process was illustrated earlier, in the formation of Theodoric’s Goths from the
wreckage of Attila’s empire. The second,
related point is that the process whereby a person or, better, a family might
change from primarily self-identifying as Roman, for example, to primarily
self-identifying as Gothic, could take a long time: at least a generation and
perhaps two or three. This problem is
accentuated by the short life of the Ostrogothic kingdom. Although long, Theodoric’s reign spanned less
than two generations. The succession
crises and instability that followed his death and, especially, the outbreak of
the Gothic Wars (still only forty-six years after the Goths’ arrival on the
Isonzo) probably put a brake on these processes. Thus it is hardly surprising that one cannot
document clear-cut instances of complete ethnic change.

Nonetheless, the Ostrogothic
evidence does show the existence of
the dynamics of such change, elsewhere in the post-imperial West. One index is
the attestation of individuals with Gothic and Roman names. It must be remembered that the addition of a
name was hardly uncommon in late antiquity, especially when associated with a
change of status. Gregory of Tours added
the name Gregorius when he entered the priesthood; his maternal great-uncle
Gundulf doubtless took that Germanic name when he entered the service of the
kings of Austrasia.[70] This was one means of gradually changing one’s
primary ethnic identification. Amory
also drew attention to the aristocrat Cyprian, who had had his sons instructed
in weapon-use and even had them taught Gothic.[71] It is significant that this took place thirty
years or so after Theodoric’s entry into Italy.
It seems clear that the competition for royal patronage and the
advantages associated with military service were causing even wealthy
Italo-Romans to adopt a Gothic identity.
Service in local garrisons could possibly bring a senior Gothic warrior’s
patronage, entry into a military household and thence inclusion in the exercitus. On that basis, a Gothic identity might be adopted
and eventually become dominant. Had the
Amal kingdom lasted as long as the Merovingian these dynamics would likely have
had similar results to those observable in the writings of Gregory of
Tours.

The life-cycle possibly played an
important part in Gothic military service, as already intimated. The Variae
mention that adolescent Goths came of age when they were liable to serve in the
army,[72]
plausibly at fifteen. Cassiodorus
mentions the training of iuvenes, apparently
archers (saggitarii), and a mobilisation
order commands the Goths to bring forth their young men. This is where the mention of domestici patres takes on an added
significance, possibly as a reference to older warriors.[73] Comparison with other post-imperial
situations permits the suggestion that when he came of age a Goth learnt his
trade either in the household of an older Gothic warrior or in units commanded
by such veterans (like, perhaps, the archers of Salona). “Adoption by arms” was possibly important at
this stage and would further bind military communities.[74] Merovingian comites had their followings of pueri;
it may be that the domestici in
attendance on Theodoric’s officials ought to be seen in the same way.[75] Clearly, they were paid by the fisc. At some point they may have graduated to more
established units of milites, with a
salary provided as outlined earlier.
Finally, at a certain age, they may have married, acquired lands and
settled down, becoming older warriors called out only for specific campaigns
but training their own households. This
proposed system looks superficially “primitivising”, making the Gothic military
resemble the Zulu army’s married and unmarried impis. In fact it fits a
range of evidence across post-imperial Europe.
Even the late Roman army’s twinned regiments of iuniores and seniores
might imply similar careers for Roman soldiers.[76] The distinction between doryphoroi and hypaspistai
among Belisarius’ guards (whatever their actual designation) may suggest a
similar life-cycle-based career within a regular army.[77] The suggested role of the life-cycle within
Gothic military service adds to other dynamics to underline change through time
and the evolution of military identities and systems of remuneration.

Theodoric carefully ensured his
armies were well equipped and supplied.
Cassiodorus’ writings contain numerous references to the upkeep of
proper military camps, regular provision of annonae
and the supervision of armourers. The
king also took a close interest in making sure of his cities’ proper
fortification.

Archaeological Evidence

Another gratuitous plug, but with a
helmet of (possibly) Ostrogothic
manufacture on thecover

It is often thought possible to
determine the areas where the Gothic army was settled from the archaeological
record.[78] The distribution of particular types of
metalwork, usually from a inhumations containing such objects as grave-goods
(figure 1), has been understood to reveal zones of Gothic settlement. Such a straightforward interpretation cannot
stand for a number of reasons. First, the
origins of most of the material in question (largely feminine in any case) does
not necessarily authorise its designation as “Ostrogothic”.[79] Second, archaeological material does not have
an ethnic identity, so, even if such material demonstrably came from the trans-Danubian
Gothic homelands, one would not know whether someone interred with these
objects was a Goth who had accompanied Theodoric to Italy, or was descended
from one such. Third, perhaps most
importantly, the material is found in very small numbers. If the costume associated with these objects was
thought of as Gothic, clearly not all Goths were buried in this fashion. The rite cannot therefore simply reflect
Gothic settlement.

The context of such isolated finds
is, consequently, crucial.
As mentioned, most were deliberately and publicly deposited with the
dead. Although, as figure 1 shows,
about fifty sites in Italy and Dalmatia contain such burials, usually only one
or two such graves are known from each site.
Some are from urban cemeteries, notably at major centres like Rome,
Ravenna, Aquileia and Milan and frequently associated with churches. Why were some people buried like this when
the vast majority were not?

If these artefacts were
associated with Gothic holders of political and military power, their display
in the burial ritual must be significant.
Weapon-burials and other furnished inhumations exist, especially in
peripheral areas of Italy, in the pre-Ostrogothic era so the custom of
displaying a dead person’s status in death was not new. Nonetheless, earlier barbarian troops do not generally
seem to have taken to manifesting their ethnicity in this way. That the Goths did so must therefore somehow illustrate
the impact of imperial collapse and Gothic conquest upon Italian social
relationships. Furnished inhumation was
a public display.[80] In the suburban church burials with possible
Gothic connotations, the audience of a burial was possibly made up of the
politically powerful. In rural contexts,
as perhaps, if the find does not represent a hoard, with the lavish burial of a
woman at Domagnano (San Marino),[81] that
audience might have comprised other local landowners and lesser people.

Figure 1.

That women as well as (if not
more often than) men were buried with these objects argues that the deaths of
all members of certain kindreds could be marked by such displays. It also argues for a particular gendering of
power. The families employing the ritual
demonstrated the basis of their pre-eminence: their association with the Gothic
holders of political and military power.
This could be linked with competition for royal patronage within local
communities and among the political élite.
We must also, however, surely conclude that people adopting this costume
in public ritual were not necessarily (and were possibly even unlikely to have
been) Danubian incomers. Nonetheless, these
burials’ fairly limited number shows that, while the death of a family member
produced stress, the threat to local standing was not critical. These displays, however, still speak of the
tensions involved in establishing local power-structures. The finds’ distribution thus most likely reveals
the areas where such stress and competition for power were most common. It is highly likely that these included areas
where Gothic newcomers were settled, but clearly it need have absolutely no
relationship to such settlements’ overall distribution. The quality of the evidence, almost
invariably discovered long ago in obscure and even dubious circumstances, is so
poor that more detailed social and chronological analyses are impossible.

What matters for present purposes
is how, in however attenuated a form, it shows that the political and military
power associated with the Goths reached down to local societies and
power-struggles therein. That the styles
of objects which seemingly manifested a connection with Theodoric’s government
were feminine as often as masculine further supports the suggestion that,
however they were salaried, the Gothic soldiers and their families became, over
time, a fixed component of such communities and their politics.

The archaeological record permits
few statements about the equipment of Theodoric’s soldiers. Weapons are rare in the find complexes just
discussed, not least because so many of them are female burials. Those which are known are unremarkable:
lance-heads. Lavish items of
horse-harness confirm the written sources’ indications that cavalry were a key
element of the Gothic army. Several
fortifications were occupied in the Ostrogothic period. Invillino (Friuli) is one of the best known
and most thoroughly excavated. Although
no phase was directly related to the Ostrogothic period, its Period III
encompassed that era.[82]

The Ostrogothic army of
Theodoric’s reign was clearly highly organised and efficient. Its Gallic, Spanish and Balkan campaigns were
well-organised, well-led and usually successful. Success breeds success, of course. Warriors continued to join Theodoric and the
repeated experience of victory made Gothic troops battle-hardened and
confident.

C: The Gothic Wars

The accounts of Theodoric’s
kingdom’s cataclysmic downfall in the Gothic Wars provide much detailed, if problematic,
data on the Gothic army in action. A
significant mistake has been the use of Procopius’ account to shed light upon
the nature of the Goths who entered Italy in 489. Numerous dynamics were at work within the
kingdom – especially within its army – that made the armed forces of the 530s
to 550s quite different from those of the 480s and 490s. “The Goths”, as they appear in Procopius’
narrative, owe their nature to the working through of those dynamics.

Procopius’ account demands care. Although filled with the sort of detail beloved
by military historians – and generally absent in early medieval western Europe[83]
– it cannot be taken as straightforward description, even if Procopius was an
eye-witness of some events. The Wars are enmeshed in very
traditional classical ethnographic stereotyping and Procopius himself wrote in
learned Attic Greek, striving to fit his account alongside the great examples
of the historical genre: Thucydides and Polybius.[84] Hence the appearance of doryphoroi and hypaspistai
in Roman and Gothic armies.[85] Procopius’ writing – at least initially – was
heavily imbued with Justinianic ideology about the rightness of the
reconquest. His accounts of the Gothic
forces, especially in the set-pieces of the siege of Rome, have therefore to be
handled with caution. Procopius mocked
those barbarians who wanted to be Romans.
Thus the tragicomic accounts of incompetently-deployed Gothic siege
towers and Gothic generals who fail to note the allegedly decisive military
difference between the two armies, which Belisarius spotted early in the
campaign: that the Romans have mounted archers and the Goths do not.[86] Some such accounts are surely
hyperbolic. Procopius’ account of Gothic
‘oplitoi must surely be heavily
ironic.[87] Although an apt description of an armoured
close-fighting spearman protected by a large round shield, the term’s cultural
baggage – the Attic hoplite, civilised citizen-soldier par excellence – and its
incongruity when applied to barbarian warriors besieging Rome would not have
been lost on Procopius’ readers.
Procopius less critical attitude towards Totila may stem as much from
Totila correctly performing the role of barbarian warlord allotted to him by
Graeco-Roman ethnography – unlike the comic philosopher-king Theodahad or the
bumbling Wittigis, would-be poliorcetes
– as from any disillusionment with Justinianic policy.[88]

Close scrutiny suggests that the
two sides were actually very alike. The
possible distinction between older and younger warriors, the former acting as
officers for the latter, especially within bodyguard units, has already been
mentioned. Another shared feature seems
to be the warriors’ ability to fight mounted or on foot, according to the
situation. This fluidity, rather than a
formal division into units of infantry and cavalry, is characteristic of the
early medieval west.[89] That the Gothic army, as Cassiodorus makes
clear, was a well-organised, more or less regular army on the Roman model,
rather than the barbarian horde often envisaged in Byzantine accounts or uncritical
modern studies based on the latter, also brought the two sides closer
together. Indeed, given the predominance
of troops recruited from beyond the frontier in the East Roman army, the Gothic
army may have been considerably more “Roman” than the forces opposing
them. This irony seems to be heavily
played upon in Procopius’ account. The
similarities between the armies certainly facilitated (as in Theodoric’s
conquest) the changing of sides between the armies. Soldiers in the opposing forces could be
barely distinguishable from each other.[90]

The Gothic army’s dismal showing
in the earliest phase of the war probably attests to the previous decade political
stresses and a lack of active campaigning.
Most of the experienced Gothic troops were located outside Italy, in the
Balkans (where they scored some important early successes against the invading
Romans), in Provence and in Spain, where they were probably involved in
sometimes successful campaigning against the Franks.[91] Their opponents, by contrast, were
battle-hardened and confident veterans, used to victory under Belisarius (even
if frequently more by luck than judgement).
The dynamics of the earlier Theodorician period were reversed. They would turn back again when Totila’s
forces experienced a long and unbroken run of success.

The Gothic warrior was characteristically
equipped with horse, sword and shield, as written and archaeological evidence
from Theodoric’s reign also suggests.
Some used bows, at least when dismounted, and spears were thrown from a
distance as well as used in hand-to-hand fighting. Totila’s instructions to his men to discard
all weapons other than their swords (if Procopius is to be believed) made sound
sense in the context of the battle of Busta Gallorum. A rapid charge directly into close-combat
would avoid the fatal temptation to exchange missiles with the Romans, who had
the advantage of numbers, especially in archers.[92]

The wars’ effects on the Italian
peninsula are well-known.[93] One was surely the arresting of any dynamics
that might have led to ethnic changes like those in Gaul and Spain and embryonically
attested in Theodoric’s reign. Harder
lines were drawn between Goths and Romans, even though almost certainly more on
the basis of political choice than biological descent. Most of the rank and file of the 520s will
have been born and grown up in Italy, making them significantly different from
warriors born and raised within the peripatetic Ostrogothic army in the
post-Hunnic Balkans. It is unlikely that
more than a handful of those mustered in Theodoric’s last military assemblies,
even patres domestici, had any clear
memory of a life outside the seemingly stable confines of Romano-Gothic
Italy. It would be yet more mistaken to
see the soldiers facing Belisarius’ troops, let alone those who followed Totila
and Teïas against Narses, as shaped by anything other than late antique
Italian, Provençal or Dalmatian culture, like their “Roman” or “provincial”
neighbours. Marriage further blurred
familial and genealogical distinctions. Besides,
the processes discussed earlier had already led to Italo-Romans joining the
army and perhaps adding a Gothic dimension to their own hierarchy of
identities. The Goths had always
incorporated other groups, sometimes retaining an ethnic label,[94]
sometimes not. Byzantine deserters
joined the Goths during the wars and doubtless also added a Gothic identity. Those who returned to the East Romans surely
abandoned it again. None of this implies
“incomplete assimilation”[95]
or solid boundaries between Goths and others.
We do not know whether Roman soldiers who returned to Justinian’s armies
were the same men as had deserted earlier.
A Roman deserting to the Goths became, in some ways, a Goth, although
the non-Italian and frequently indeed non-imperial origin of these troops
continued to mark them out among their new comrades. Given the Italian upbringing of most Goths, it
was easier for a Goth deserting to Narses to become a Roman.

The dynamics discussed throughout
this chapter permit a more subtle reading of the Goths’ ultimate downfall than
that recently and repeatedly championed.[96] The account of the kingdom’s final demise has
been claimed to show the Goths as a “people” with a defined identity founded in
a large class of freemen with a direct link to the king, as well as an
aristocratic class. The decisive defeat
of a portion of the Gothic army, and the threat to wives and children posed by
Eastern Roman military operations has been presented as sufficient proof of
this contention. The conclusion,
however, by no means necessarily emerges from the evidence. The revival of the discredited Germanist
notion of a class of Königsfreie need not detain us.[97] The Gothic armies’ stratification and inclusion
of a larger body of rank and file than leaders is hardly surprising; nor is the
idea that the rank and file had a significant political role.[98] Numerous dynamics within the Italian kingdom
embedded Gothic military communities within peninsular society and
politics. The edges of these communities
doubtless hardened during the wars and it cannot be astonishing that the wives
and children, whole families, of serving Gothic soldiers should have been more
at risk than in the peaceful conditions of Theodoric’s reign. It might have been safer to take them on
campaign than to leave them behind, giving some Gothic forces a character
resembling those that entered Italy in 489.
The consequences of the Gothic field armies’ (and navy’s) serious
defeats similarly have no necessary bearing on the nature of the Italian Goths. The destruction of its field army at
Adrianople in 378 had rendered the Eastern Empire – with far greater military
manpower reserves than the Italian kingdom – effectively incapable of serious
offensive military action for perhaps a decade.
The western field army’s slaughter at the Frigidus was decisive for the
western Empire; it never had a sufficient breathing space to rebuild a
substantial force of the same standard.[99] Troops can be replaced in numbers but not
necessarily in quality, military experience and so on, and Procopius makes
clear that limited manpower, compared with that of the Empire, was a worry that
dictated Gothic strategy in the 540s and 50s.
The men accompanying Totila in his desperate charge at Busta Gallorum or who died with Teïas in
the cataclysmic battle of Mons Lactarius
were doubtless the best warriors the Goths could muster. Others still died in the disastrous naval
defeat of Sena Gallica in the
Adriatic.[100] That these defeats effectively ended Gothic resistance
is considerably less surprising than the facts that it took three bloody
engagements to do so and that some Gothic garrisons continued to hold out even
then.

The Goths’ subsequent
disappearance from history is easily encompassed within the dynamics discussed
throughout this chapter, albeit in reverse; indeed Goths continue to be
attested in Italy after the completion of the “reconquest”.[101] Although primarily military in composition
and function, the Goths had been more than simply an army when they invaded
Italy under Theodoric. By the time of
Totila’s and Teïas’ deaths, sixty-odd years later, the Italian Goths had –
unsurprisingly – changed in many ways.
Their primarily military character had, however, endured
throughout. A kingdom created by the
sword had perished by it.

·Halsall, G. “Funny
foreigners: Laughing with the barbarians in late antiquity”, in Humour, History and Politics in Late
Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Halsall, G., Cambridge 2002, pp.89-113.

·Heather,
P., “Gens and regnum among the Ostrogoths” in Regna and Gentes:
The Relationship between late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms
in the Transformation of the Roman World, ed. Goetz, H-W., Jarnut, J., & Pohl, W., Leiden, 2003,
pp.85-133.

[5]
The debate has focused more often on Alaric’s Goths than the Ostrogoths, but
the same issues apply. A clear statement
in defence of the “people on the move” interpretation may be found in P.
Heather, The Goths (Oxford, 1996),
pp.169-78. For the discussion of the
earlier Goths, many points of which can be made, by analogy, for the
Ostrogoths, see Liebeschuetz, “Alaric’s Goths: Nation or army?”; Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp.189-94;
Kulikowski, “Nation versus army”.

[6]
For the Ostrogoths, the locus classicus
is Malchus, fr.20 (Blockley).

[7]
The opinion has repeatedly been expressed by Peter Heather, but with most
sophistication in his Goths and Romans, and
Goths.

[14]
The intervention of a Gothic army from Gaul was critical in breaking Odovacar’s
siege of Theodoric in Pavia (Anonymous Valesianus, pars posterior 11.53).
Whether this represented pan-Gothic cooperation is unlikely. It may be preferable to see the Gallic
faction chancing its arm in Italian politics in established fifth-century
tradition, with Alaric II following his uncle, Theodoric II’s, example.

[20]
See Bjornlie, elsewhere this volume, for the straightforwardly fiscal
connotations of the illatio tertiarum. That the tertia
in question related to the fiscal payment schedule simplifies the situation
further still.

[23]
Mommsen, “Ostgotische Studien”, p.499, nn.3-4, had related millenarii to millenae. Lot “Du régime de l’hospitalité”, p.1003, and
nn.5-6, thought millenarii were
officers. Generally, however, it had been assumed that a millena was a fixed amount of land.

[31]Variae 4.32 says that the property of
the proscribed belongs to the fisc. The Edictum Theodorici specifies the fisc’s
claim to take over the property of convicted criminals in some cases, where
there were no heirs. ET 112-3.

[32]Variae 1.18 seems to me to refer more
easily to the distribution of expropriated land (and abuses of that situation)
when Theodoric conquered Italy than to illegitimate claiming of tax-revenue.

[37]
The illegal retention (by his uncle) and management of the paternal inheritance
of an adolescent Goth who is of sufficient age to perform his military service
is discussed in Variae 1.38. Here, the text could relate at least as
easily to an inherited draft on fiscal revenue as to landed property.

[38]
Goffart continues to view my own modified version of his thesis as “expropriationist”,
something it has never been. Goffart, “Administrative
methods”, p.48.

[47]
Heather, “Theoderic, King of the Goths”, pp.162-3. Some of the settings for Theoderician ritual
is analysed by Annabel Wharton, Refiguring
the PostClassical City, pp.105-47; See also Wood, “Theoderic’s monuments”
(which oddly ignores Wharton’s more theoretically sophisticated analysis, as do
the discussants: pp.263-77).

[56]Variae 4.49. See discussion in Amory,
People and Identity, pp.344-6;
Wolfram, History of the Goths, p.103.

[57]Variae 6.15. Cp. CTh 14.10.1. The military
identification of the donor/s of Variae
1.26 is suggested only by a reference to the soldier’s cloak (lacerna) in the last lines: “tribute is
owed to the purple [i.e., here, the king], not to the military cloak.”

[64]
Wolfram, History of the Goths,
pp.316-7, referring to Variae 1.11 claims that the troops (milites)
commanded by Servatus, dux of Raetia, “cannot have been Goths”. Wolfram does not explain why but Heather, “Gens and regnum”,
p.118, n.89, builds on his foundations (mis-citing the source) to allege that
Servatus is “said to have led limitanei (i.e. inferior quality troops)”. Variae
1.11 makes no mention of limitanei or
Romans.

[73]
Mommsen reads the text as domestici partis
equitum et peditum. This may seem a more logical reading but is
not grammatically satisfactory. Patres seems to be the more common
manuscript form but the manuscripts do not really allow a decision. I am grateful to M. Maxime Emion for
discussion of this point.

[91]
Gregory of Tours, Histories 3.21,
refers to the Goths’ recapture of territory lost after Vouillé. This must have occurred under the leadership
of Theoderic’s Spanish regent (and later Visigothic king) Theudis.

[92]
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century commanders similarly ordered troops to
attack with unloaded muskets when an advance was to be pressed briskly with “cold
steel”.

[93]
The account in Brown, Gentlemen and
Officers, pp.1-60, is classic.

[94]
Like the Gepids of Variae 5.10-11. Late imperial units frequently bore ethnic
titles. The Gepidic origins of many of
the troops discussed should not be doubted but one ought not to assume that
these Gepids were any more a “people” on the move than the late imperial
regiments of Franci, Alamanni or Parthi, similarly redeployed with their wives, children and camp
followers.

[95]
Phrases like “incomplete assimilation” have highly conservative political
connotations which should be noted.

[98]
It seems, again, to be politically revealing that the suggestion that the
Gothic rank and file did not blithely follow their officers and social betters’
instructions should be represented as a surprising and defining feature of
Gothic society.